Vodafone promises money back on 30-day network satisfaction

Refunds on usage and handset repayments will now be given for customers who opt out of using the Vodafone Australia network under its 30-day network satisfaction guarantee, the telecommunications provider has announced.

Under the network guarantee launched in 2012, Vodafone initially offered customers who sign up for a plan but are not satisfied within the first 30 days to cancel their contract and only pay for what they used.

Now, it will refund all monthly access fees and device instalments that were paid by the customer during that 30-day period under the condition that the customer returns the device and equipment within 10 days of cancellation.

"As smartphones have become an essential tool in our everyday lives, we believe consumers deserve assurance that they'll have a great network experience where they live, work, and play," said Vodafone chief marketing officer Loo Fun Chee.

"And if they don't, they should be able to walk away, no questions asked. We know this is a pain point for consumers and businesses, and one we are committed to addressing."

The money-back guarantee on network satisfaction is also being offered for small business customers with up to nine connections.

According to an OpenSignal report from last week, Vodafone now matches Telstra in terms of the availability of its 4G network.

"Though Telstra outperformed in speed, the country's smallest operator Vodafone kept pace with the Australian giant when it came to offering a consistent LTE connection," the report said.

"Vodafone and Telstra were statistically tied in network availability, at 76 percent."

Vodafone was also tied first for 4G latency, at 54.71ms, and 3G download speeds, at 4.76Mbps, and took the prize for best 3G latency, at 72.02ms. It had the slowest download speed over 4G, however, at 18.49Mbps, while Optus stood at 19.18Mbps and Telstra at 23.6Mbps.

Vodafone began a new push for its 30-day satisfaction guarantee in April, on the heels of three major outages on Telstra's network -- the first on February 22, which affected prepaid and post-paid mobile services and was caused by "embarrassing human error"; the second on March 17, which involved an hours-long national mobile data and voice outage; and the third on March 22, which was a smaller voice outage.

Thank You

By registering you become a member of the CBS Interactive family of sites and you have read and agree to the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Video Services Policy. You agree to receive updates, alerts and promotions from CBS and that CBS may share information about you with our marketing partners so that they may contact you by email or otherwise about their products or services.
You will also receive a complimentary subscription to the ZDNet's Tech Update Today and ZDNet Announcement newsletters. You may unsubscribe from these newsletters at any time.